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Daily deals April 17 2009

Aah the weekend is near again, time for a new update on some great hardware deals I spotted. This week I like to run you though a couple of deals related to DDR memory. Never underestimate the amount of memory in your system.

These days, 2 GB at minimum is recommended. But it's so cheap these days that we just recommend to go for 4 GB instantly. Of course if you are on a 64-bit operating system .. and in combo with X58 / Core i7 .. yeah .. we'd recommend you to go for triple channel memory, 6 GB my man. Anyway let's walk through some nice deals:

DDR2 memory deals:

Corsair XMS2 2GB PC2-6400 DDR2 - if you like to stick with 2GBmemory, you never can go wrong with a Corsair kit. This is PC2-6400 memory meaning it will run at 800 Mhz and it can do that at CAS 4 as well. We have a super deal at $29.99

Corsair XMS2 Xtreme Performance 4GB PC2-6400 DDR2 - Here we have exactly the same kit, yet now 2x 2Gb modules for 4 GB of memory. We spotted it for $61.99

OCZ Technology Reaper HPC Edition 4GB PC2-6400 DDR2 - oh here is a nice one, Reaper memory, always great timings and very tweakable. And they have the funky heatspreaders. At 800MHz, the 4GB Edition runs at 5-5-5 latency timings and it's fairly cheap at $54.99

DDR3 memory deals

Patriot Memory Patriot 2GB (2 x 1GB) - For the value minded, two GB of memory from patriot. These modules are designed to operate at 1600MHz at 9-9-9 24 timings, selling for $47.99

OCZ Technology Gold 6GB PC3-12800 1600MHz DDR3 - Now if you go X58 / Core i7 and want to save a little on price, this has got to be the best memory deal I have seen in a while. Get this, 6 GB triple channel 1600 MHz Gold series memory from OCZ at a price of $84.99, (hot deal!) seriously that's an incredible price.

That's it for this update, have a snazzy weekend !

Samsung Ships Self-Encrypting SSD Drives

Samsung Electronics Co. announced on Thursday that it is shipping 1.8-in. and 2.5-in. self-encrypting solid state drives. The drives are targeting handheld devices and laptops, respectively. Available in 64GB, 128GB and 256GB versions, Dell already decided to offer them as an optional upgrade for its Latitude line of laptops. These new solid state drives are the results of a collaboration between Samsung Electronics and Wave Systems and present the industry's first self-encrypting SSDs.

"Samsung has combined the tremendous performance advantages of solid state technology with integrated hardware encryption for drives designed especially for today's 'road warrior' professionals,

Versions and Dates of Office 2010 Announced

Microsoft announced on Wednesday that "Office 2010 will be finished and ready to send to manufacturers in the first half of next year." Besides that, Office 2010, formerly known under its code name "Office 14", is going to be released in two different flavors: 32-bit and 64-bit, making it the first Office to support both platforms. Another interesting tidbit is the ad-supported, free, and reasonably slimmed-down, Web-based version of Office 2010, which was announced at the Professional Developer Conference in Los Angeles, September 2008. Businesses, which want to use the Web-based version without the ads, will have to pay a fee to Microsoft.

Further, "Microsoft plans to let hundreds of thousands of people test a technical preview of the new Office portfolio starting in the third quarter of 2009, Capossela," a senior vice president in the Microsoft group that makes Office, "said. The company did not say whether average PC users will have a chance to test a more polished beta version."

Pirate Bay loses trial: defendants face prison time, hefty fines

The four defendants in The Pirate Bay versus entertainment industry trial have been found guilty in a Swedish court of being accessories to breaching copyright laws.

The verdict was handed down to four men behind the notorious BitTorrent tracker site this morning in a court in Stockholm. "The Stockholm district court has today found guilty the four individuals that were charged with accessory to breaching copyright laws," the court said in a statement. "The court has sentenced each of them to one year in prison."

Additionally, the defendants have been ordered to pay 30 million Swedish crowns ($3.58m). Big entertainment companies including Universal, MGM and Sony have been seeking damages of more than 100 million crowns ($12m) in lost sales. The Pirate Bay Co-founders Peter Sunde, Carl Lundstr

SpacePilot PRO mouse revealed

Okay .. most niche gadget of the year ? What do you think ? The SpacePilot PRO mouse went on sale today from 3Dconnexion and let us tell you, this thing is pretty high-tech. While it is designed specifically for engineering tasks, it has a style all its own that you should know about.

With a cap controller, this mouse can be used to navigate through 3D environments. This

Thermalright Cogage brand for mainstream CPU coolers

Thermalright today introduced the Cogage, a new brand for mainstream computer and gaming gear.

The first products within this lineup will be the True Spirit and MST-140 processor coolers. The TRUE Spirit is a tower HSF for the Intel Core i7 (LGA1366) processors, it has four heatpipes, copper base, 48 aluminum fins and a 120mm PWM fan with a noise level of 19.6-37.4dBA and air flow of 35-66.5CFM. The cooler measures 133mm x 156mm x 38mm (L x W x H) and weighs 670g. It should be available for around $40.

Also new is the Cogage MST-140, this cooler aims to cool both your processor and the surrounding MOSFET and northbridge area. This product is designed for Intel LGA775 and 1366 processors. It has a four heatpipes, copper base, aluminum fins and a 140mm fan with a noise level of 33.5dBA and airflow of 94.7CFM. It measures 144mm x 147mm x 70.2mm (L x W x H) and weighs 410g (without fan).

Square Enix announces Order of War

Ooh, this one looks nice alright. Software house Square Enix announced Wargaming.net's World War II real-time strategy game, Order of War, this Autumn. The game will be released exclusively on the PC playufor (yay!).

Press-release - In the summer of 1944, the Second World War entered its end-game when the Allies launched two major operations that would drive back German forces on both the Western and Eastern Fronts at once. In the ultimate test of military strategy, ORDER OF WAR will challenge you not only to lead America

GeForce GTX 275 shootout BFG | Inno3D | Palit | Sparkle

A week or two ago NVIDIA announced it's latest graphics card positioned in the high-end region, called the GeForce GTX 275. The GeForce GTX 275 is a bit of a hybrid card in-between the GeForce GTX 260 and GeForce GTX 285. NVIDIA launched the GeForce GTX 275 in an allergic reaction to team red's product to show and flex their rendering muscle.

As such we figured to cease the moment and show you a couple of retail boards. For this article, a total of five GeForce GTX 275 graphics cards will be put to the test. We take the NVIDIA reference sample, two reference clocked products and two pre-overclocked products to see where we are at in terms of performance, cooling and features among the difference AIB/AIC partners.

Intel Q1 income down 55%, Atom sales drop

Intel on Tuesday reported its first-quarter financial information, showing a 55-percent drop in income while revenue slid 26-percent to $7.1 billion year-over-year. The company also experienced a drop in gross margin from 53 percent last year to 45.6 percent this year, explained by higher factory-underutilization charges and startup costs.

Despite the growth of the netbook segment, sales of Atom processors and chipsets fell 27 percent sequentially. In April of last year, the company was said to be experiencing a shortage of the components and less than 40 percent of the requests were being met.

Reacting to the netbook boom, other chip-makers such as AMD have developed competing products. VIA is also working on new CPUs for small portable devices, with the Nano E-series featuring a 1,333MHz front system bus speed expected to arrive soon. Qualcomm and Freescale recently announced plans to expand their ARM-based component offerings for netbooks.

The PC Gaming Alliance (PCGA), "a nonprofit corporation promoting PC gaming worldwide, while providing an open forum where companies can cooperate to develop and promote solutions and activities that drive the PC gaming industry forward," lost two of its founding members, today.

Activision Blizzard, known for popular games like World of Warcraft and Call of Duty, and Acer, world's third largest computer manufacturer, both left the PC Gaming Alliance due to membership costs. Randy Stute, the non-profit organization's president, confirmed yesterday that Activision Blizzard and Acer both felt that they could not justify the expense in both money and staff to continue to be a member of the group.

"However Stute also confirmed that gaming retailer Gamestop has just joined the organization on the less expensive "Contributors" level of membership. At the moment Gamestop's membership is not listed on the PC Gaming Alliance's official web site. The most interesting new member, however, is Sony DADC which is the parent company for the SecuROM software solution that several PC game publishers use for their digital rights management set-ups. Stude said that Sony DADC wanted to join the PC Gaming Alliance to give their input on the organization's sub-committee on PC game piracy.

The PC Gaming Alliance now has only three game developers and/or publishers on the board (Epic Games, Capcom and Microsoft)."

AMD Phenom II X4 955 3.2GHz and 3 GHz Athlon X2

AMD is brewing up some new processors. The first is to be released next week and is the Phenom II X4 955 processor (April 23rd). This part should be a 125W TDP processor with a frequency of 3.2GHz, it will be the fastest chip in AMD's lineup.

From what we heard is that the processor will be a Black Edition CPU which means unlocked. Pricing wise in the US expect roughly $300 for the CPU and in the EU

Radeon HD 4830 with 800 Shader processors surfaced

Interesting, as you guys know the Radeon HD 4830 is an affordable graphics card from AMD based on RV770LE chip which is priced at around $89.99.

Recently some weird reports surfaced on the web. See, the product should have 640 Shader processors. Yet several buyers report a full 800 stream processors much like the Radeon HD 4850/4870 has. The AIB brands involved include Powercolor, Sapphire and Triplex.

If you are one of the lucky ones, congratulatiosn .. you got a very good deal at 90 bucks.

Check out the GPU-Z screenshot, you'll also notice the RV770 and not LE, apparantly some 4830 boards simply have the 4850 GPU embedded:

OCZ Vertex 120 GB SSD review

With the Vertex series SSD, OCZ offers an extremely high performing SSD with a new controller and ... in addition to that a nice phat 64MB cache to tackle the slow small file write issue.

Now taking this course makes SSDs a little more expensive then they already are, but hear me out on this one. Technology as shown today at one stage will also reach high volume and yes... then the price will go down as well, much like we have seen with the early generation SSD drives from last year.

The result? Well, the Vertex is in many ways a stunning SSD drive that wipes the floor clean with JMicron controller based SSD drives. But sheesh... this thing is fast.